Years ago Dad's company was building a new crushing plant to go into a quarry that sits on I-35 between San Antonio and New Braunfels. Since I was a field welder, I got stuck going out there one day with him after hours to work on a massive radial stacker unit. Lucky for me, they were blasting that evening.

They pulled us off the stacker and got us to a minimum safe distance for the blast. So the whistles go off, and they pop the hillside. Instead of sliding down like you see in successful blasts, the hill erupted like the image above and came straight out towards us. Minimum safe distance became ground zero target zone.

If we would've had a full crew out there at that time, someone would have gotten seriously injured or killed. Instead we ended up with a wrecked company truck and a helluva visual memory I won't forget.

When the dust settled, they told us that there was a mud pocket behind the drill points. The shot reverberated from the water and the energy got magnified and caused the rocks to shoot forward instead of cracking and dropping.

Anyway, that's what the image above reminded me of the second I saw it.